I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA in 1946, within sight of the Mason-Dixon Line which is appropriate since my father was a Yankee from Ohio and my mother a Southern Belle from North Carolina, USA.

They met and married during World War II while my father, a lieutenant in the US Army, was stationed in Wilmington, North Carolina before being shipped over to France. My older sister was born 9 months to the day after their wedding in 1944. I was born 9 months to the day after my father's return from the war. Hmmm...

So, as it turned out, the age difference between my older sister and me is 22 months and 9 days. By a stroke of nearly unbelievable coincidence or extremely meticulous family planning, 22 months and 9 days is also the age difference between my younger sister and myself. Therefore, when I say I'm the middle child, I mean exactly the middle, to the day. What are the odds?

When I was 6 months old, we moved from Cincinnati to a small town a few miles north of Dayton, Ohio and this is where I grew up, along with my two sisters, until graduating from high school in 1965.

My father, a self-employed commercial artist, graphic designer, and photographer (not to mention a chess player of some repute), first introduced me to the graphic arts in 1950 when I was 4 years old and got curious one evening to see what he was doing in his photographic darkroom. Not one to waste a pair of idle hands, even those of such a tender and inexperienced age (I mean, I couldn't even read or write yet at that point), my father put me to work that night developing photos after he exposed them at the enlarger. I will never forget the magic of the moment I saw my first photographic image appearing in the developer tray. I was immediately hooked. The next day when my father found me trying to develop my own 'photo' using a piece of plain paper in a tray of water (I might have completed my first photographic job but I didn't understand the process yet) he made me a pinhole camera and cut up some photographic paper for me to use and so began my long education in all areas of the graphic arts.

At age twelve I also developed an interest in electronics and with the help of my father and his brother, an amateur radio operator, I had my own amateur radio license by the time I was fifteen and a commercial license by nineteen.

My secondary education consists of formal training in electronics and the graphic arts, although the minimum required in both cases to obtain a piece of paper because the vast majority of my education came from my father who always felt he taught me more while I was growing up than most people learn in five years of college. My experience since then has done little to refute this.

Thus began my split career of sometimes graphic artist and photographer, sometimes electronics technician and engineer, draftsman, printed circuit designer, manager, and businessman, while dabbling the whole time with my third love, writing.

During my early working years I was very fortunate as well to be taken under the wing of a co-worker who also taught at the local art institute. He became my mentor and not only further contributed to my education in graphic art but also taught me an appreciation of fine art and industrial design. He is, I'm happy to say, still part of my life even though my father who I also regarded as a mentor has passed on, as has my mother.

Somewhere along in my twenty-somethings I married and had two of the greatest kids a father could have (both of whom having made me a grandfather of seven and counting). I kept my kids but not their mother and thus my love life began a tumultuous period that lasted until I met Sandra while traveling in 1987 and since our marriage in 1990 things have come up nothing but roses.

And so, after 65 years of life I find myself retired from providing graphic art services for high tech clients which had kept me involved in two of the three primary interests of my life - graphics and electronics - and now shoot digital photography purely for the fun of it.

Ain't life grand?


SANDRA

Born in Morrisburg, Ontario, Canada in 1948, I was supposed to be a boy so there was no girl’s name picked out for me. My parents decided on Ethel Rose which my 4 year old sister Betty didn’t like. Instead she suggested Sandra Rose (ed. note: Thanks, Betty) as she had liked our neighbour’s daughter’s name Sylvia Sandra when she was born two years before me. So, I became Sandra Rose. My sister was also quite disappointed in me as she had been told she would have someone to play with.

My parents lived on a small dairy farm just outside of Williamsburg, Ontario where I grew up and attended a one room public school taught by the same teacher for eight years. An excellent teacher, I might add. My early years were spent playing with the farm animals, trying to dress the barn kittens in doll’s clothes and floating sticks in the water of the fast moving ditch behind the barn.

Living on a farm was not without its chores - mowing acres of lawn with a push mower, working in the hay, planting and weeding a field-size vegetable garden.

My father had come over from England when he was eleven years old as an orphan and was taken by my ‘grandparents’ to live with them and help on the farm as they had no children of their own. Upon their death, the farm went to him.

Up until my grandfather’s death when I was five, I could always be found about 10 steps behind him wherever he went.

Two of my favourite childhood memories are being rolled up in a quilt out on the lawn on a windy late spring day just looking up at the sky, and sleeping at the foot of my bed with my head getting the breeze from the open window.

My high school education took place in Morrisburg, Ontario, the town where I was born, about 10 kilometers away. Every day I was the first one on the bus and the last one off, other than the bus driver’s kids as they lived next door to us. I had wanted to go to university right out of grade 12 which was permitted at the time (grade 13 now), however there was no money for that so I moved to Ottawa and started working when I was 17 as a clerk for an insurance company.

My life from then is a history of two incompatible marriages and working at a job I disliked but stayed with for 26 years. After meeting Gordon in 1987 and our marriage in 1990 and parting with the dreaded job in 1997 I returned to working as an executive administrative assistant until retiring in 2004. Our life is happy, without complications and I am now a grandmother (ed. note: aka 'Grammy'), without having had to raise children of my own.

Updated Sunday, September 18, 2011

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